New Blog Features

After a long day of surfing, hacking, and tweaking, I have put some really cool new features into my blog that I think people will enjoy. The first new feature is above this post in the address bar of your browser. I have installed a Bass Page favicon (the bass clef you see before http://jasonheath.blogspot.com in your address bar). I think it adds a nice touch to the Bass Page. Also, I have hidden the Blogger navbar…sort of. You can move you mouse to the top of the screen and it will come back.

The second new feature is the language translator in the upper left hand side of the page here. Click a flag for the appropriate language and you can read and navigate the Bass Page in the language of your choice. You can also bookmark any of the translated pages and revisit them anytime.

I have also added a social bookmarking feature to the blog–at the end of each post you will see a bunch of buttons that will allow you to bookmark any of my posts in Digg, del.icio.us, Blinklist, Yahoo Web, Furl, Technorati, Simpy, Spurl, or Redditt. I use Digg and del.icio.us obsessively, but all of these services have their merits. Also, I think that the add-on looks really cool–you can mouse over each button and have the message on the left change.

By the way, I have written about the power of the social bookmarking service del.icio.us and its uses in blogging, podcasting, and education before. You can check out my previous post about del.icio.us here or check out my del.icio.us tags here.

I also tweaked my blogroll to make it more organized and easier for me to add new blogs. I have a long list of new blogs to scope out and possibly add, but please feel free to email me or leave a comment to suggest any other bass music, or education blogs or podcasts I should check out.

Finally, I added a new blog feature called Jason’s Interesting News Stories Blog. This is tied to Google Reader (my RSS reader of choice right now) and shows all the stories I find interesting. Check it out here–it’s an easy and slick way for me to highlight cool news stories about various topics (many aren’t bass or music related, but a fair amount are). I have also listed it in the Navigation and Non-Music/Education Blogs sections of my blogroll. My old blogroll posts can be accessed here (123456789).

I recently wrote about Google Reader and its new features. Check out that previous post here.

Many of these features wouldn’t be possible (or would have at least been extremely difficult) before Google’s new Beta Blogger. I am working on a post about the real power that this service provides for bloggers, but let me just say that this service is incredibly powerful and useful, and that those who have given up on Blogger in the past or moved on may want to seriously consider giving it another look. I will highlight some of the dozen or so blogs profiling Beta Blogger in a future post, but you can read my old posts (12345) in the meantime if you are interested in the service.